2023 LinkedIn SEO: 5 Tried Tips for Better Reach
Follow this guide to master the basics of LinkedIn SEO and make sure your company page shows up in relevant searches on the platform.
Follow this guide to master the basics of LinkedIn SEO and make sure your company page shows up in relevant searches on the platform.
LinkedIn is more than just a place to go when you’re looking for work. It’s the social platform par excellence for organizations looking to build partnerships, find their next hire, and even keep an eye on their competition. But if you want your company to make more of a splash, you need to up your LinkedIn SEO game.
Like most social networks, LinkedIn has a search engine and an algorithm, meaning you’ll be competing for attention with other businesses using the platform. Thankfully, it only takes a bit of work to make your company’s page shine above the rest.
Keep reading for simple tips that will supercharge your LinkedIn page’s SEO profile.
Bonus: Download a free social SEO checklist and follow pro tips for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn to get your posts seen by more people.
LinkedIn SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your LinkedIn page and posts to make them easily findable through LinkedIn search.
Similar to techniques used to make websites rank highly in search engines like Google, LinkedIn SEO involves researching and including keywords that communicate what your LinkedIn page is really about (like terms specific to your industry or your product) throughout your page. That makes it easier for potential customers and applicants to find the page or service they’re looking for.
SEO is all about making content easier to find through search engines.
By choosing the right keywords and optimizing your content to reflect them (e.g. by including them in titles) you can make it more likely that people searching for those keywords land on your page. For LinkedIn SEO, it’s about using keywords that clearly communicate what a profile, a company page, or your posts are about.
If your organization specializes in social media marketing, for example, you’ll want to use keywords that match your industry, like “social media consultant,” “social media marketing services,” and “social media management.” (Good news! Our free LinkedIn post generator makes it easy.)
Because there are so many companies on LinkedIn competing for attention from the same customer base, LinkedIn SEO can make a huge difference. Either your competitors will show up first in search results or you will.
While LinkedIn has never shared SEO guidelines or hinted at official ranking factors, it’s safe to assume that the platform uses similar factors to search engines like Google, which are well-known.
With that in mind, here are some ranking factors to consider when optimizing your pages for LinkedIn.
Now that you have a bit of an idea as to why some LinkedIn profiles and pages rank above others, let’s go into how you can make it happen for yourself.
LinkedIn SEO goes beyond just making sure you’re using the right keywords. Here are a few things you can do to improve SEO for your organization’s LinkedIn page.
Your headline is one of the first things people will notice, so there’s a temptation to just make it really catchy.
And while that’s a great way to get someone to click through to your profile, it’s not the best way to actually get your page in front of them. Instead, use keywords that are relevant to your company — or your industry — in your headline. Keep it short and to the point. You don’t need five keywords in there; one or two will do.
Did you know that you don’t have to keep your page’s original URL? LinkedIn will set a default URL for your page that’ll just be a bunch of numbers, sort of like this:
www.linkedin.com/in/company-x/69845325
If you want to improve your LinkedIn page’s SEO, you can edit your URL to reflect a keyword that ties into your industry. If you specialized in social media marketing, for example, you can customize your link like this:
www.linkedin.com/company-x-social-media-marketing
If your company is already well known in your niche, only including your name in the URL is also a good idea:
You can use up to 2,600 characters in your page’s About section, which amounts to about 371 to 650 words, depending on what words you use. That’s a lot of prime SEO space, so you should use it to the fullest! If you’re not sure where to start, you can use a tool like Google Trends to find trending keywords relevant to your industry and weave them into your About section.
Make sure you do this naturally! Use your About section to describe how your company sets itself apart from the competition, what makes your product a great option for potential customers, and how you got to where you are. Then, just put in a bit of extra effort to add those keywords into your writing.
You’ve probably already done quite a bit of posting and re-sharing, but have you used LinkedIn’s article feature? These longform posts give you the ability to essentially host your own blog through your company’s LinkedIn page, meaning you can cover topics relevant to your industry with more depth than you might be able to in a post. And these articles help improve your SEO profile, too!
Say your company works in software integration. You could post articles about the tools that are desperately in need of integration, making sure to optimize them with relevant keywords. That makes these articles easier to find, and if you show off your expertise, your brand can become known as an authority on the topic.
You’ll also want to make sure you’re publishing your posts at the right time (a.k.a. when your audience is the most active on the platform) to benefit from early engagement.
Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature (found under Analytics) tells you the best times to post on LinkedIn (as well as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok). The recommendations are based on your past performance and tailored to your unique audience and their activity patterns on social.
But, there’s no “best” time to publish for everything. The Best Time to Publish tool goes one step further than the rest and breaks down different suggested times for three key goals:
This allows you to match each piece of content to a specific business goals and optimize your posting schedule for maximum effectiveness.
LinkedIn pages might be the most thorough of all social media platforms, with a ton of fields and opportunities to add detail that other platforms can’t compete with. But many LinkedIn companies only add a quick blurb in the about section and an image. That’s a huge missed opportunity!
Not only does the LinkedIn search engine like complete pages, but every section is a chance to add keywords that’ll help your page rank higher. Here are the fields you should absolutely complete in your page — and what you should put in them:
With these techniques, your LinkedIn page will show up at the top of search results, and you’ll get so many messages from potential connections it’ll start being its own problem.
Still want to know more about LinkedIn SEO? We’ve got you covered.
Absolutely! SEO matters with all online content that’s served up by search engines, and that’s especially important on LinkedIn. By optimizing your LinkedIn profile for SEO, you can ensure that your company shows up first in related searches, making it easier for potential clients, KOLs, and job candidates to find you.
There are more than a few things you can do to improve your SEO presence on LinkedIn:
First, have a look at some of your competitors. Are there words that come up again and again? That’s not a writer being lazy, it’s someone trying to get their LinkedIn page to rank for these keywords. Take note of common expressions and sentences, and turn them into keywords you can use on your page.
If you have a list of keywords and you’re looking to prioritize them, you can use Google Trends to get a rough idea of how much search traffic a specific keyword gets on Google. By testing out different keywords and phrases — and seeing how many searches they get — you’ll get a sense of which ones you should go for. For example, here’s the trend chart for “social media management.”
How often can you update it? You shouldn’t update it for an update’s sake, but if you think about it a bit, you can probably find opportunities to update your page. Hosting an event? LinkedIn has a tab you can use to announce it. Launching a new product? Make sure you add it to your page!
The key is to make sure your page has the most up-to-date information there is. That’ll help your page show up higher in LinkedIn search results.
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